Chapter 43
“It was curious. No amount of status or material security compared to this: a man who’d still loved her even when she wasn’t his, who’d sacrificed himself for her, a love she’d been willing to forfeit everything to keep.”
Adelaide, Chapter 32
“I’m coming up.”
Standing in front of the servant’s entrance of Pembrooke House, London Noelle pulled out a key to open it. Fitz pulled her inside. He made a show of pulling her against him, marveling at the way their bodies fit together.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, looking up at him with desire clouding her gaze.
He returned it, looking into her eyes hungrily. “Do you want me to go, Noelle?”
She pulled him close enough to slip her arms inside his jacket and wrap her arms about his torso.
The skin of his neck and face were chilled; but inside his jacket, he was an inferno wrapped in linen and wool.
Always a study in contrasts, her Fitz. He rested his head on her shoulder, kissing her bared skin.
“The others might hear us,” she breathed, raking a finger over his full lips. There was a cut on his lip; gingerly, she caressed it.
He gestured around them in the empty servant’s hall. “Surely not. Besides, this house is the size of a modest cathedral. You needn’t worry on that score.” He kissed the inside of her wrist. “Tell me if you want me to stay. If you want me to leave,” he vowed into her eyes, “I will leave.”
“I don’t ever want that.” She said, “not again. I only want you right here,” she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss that filled her mouth with the taste of cognac and smoke.
He smelled of cold night air and liquor, but she relished him.
He grabbed her arm and the two of them tore off up the stairs to her room just as a light turned on in the servant’s hall.
Breathless with adrenaline and anticipation, she placed a finger over her lips for him to be quiet as they entered her room.
As soon as the door clicked shut behind them, he swiveled her so that her back leaned against the door.
Noelle removed his coat from him in a fluid motion as he overtook her mouth with his.
They were a tangle of limbs, and lips, and fingers. Her fingers forged paths through his hair. He tightly gripped her hips and walked her backwards toward the bed. He reversed them again, leaning back on his forearms and pulling her against him.
Fitz here, now, in her equine themed room, rocking her against him on her bed as his hand scoured her body for all her most untouched places, felt like something from a dream.
In her dream, however, he’d worn much less clothes.
She fumbled with his cravat until she loosened it, flinging it across the room where it landed on a table.
Just like the first time when she’d thrown his cravat and it had landed atop a statue, covering its eyes.
The memory made her chuckle, and Fitz raised a brow.
“Not sure I like that sound at the moment.”
“I was just remembering…your room.”
His voice was a wicked, warm rumble against the sensitive skin of her neck, “You mean, when I told you that I loved you… or when I made love to you?”
Her hands carved a trail down his chest, unbuttoning his shirt and releasing it from his pants.
She gasped at the bare, broad expanse of his chest.
In the bright candlelight, even with his bruises and injuries, he was even more beautiful in his shirt sleeves than he was impeccably dressed. The gall of him.
“My turn,” he breathed. Fitz sat on her bed and stood her in front of him. In the bracket of his thighs, he removed her skirts and bodice with slow, loving, worshipful hands. He pulled her chemise higher until he revealed her thighs. His hands left impressions where he touched her.
He had been the first and would be the last to see her and to touch her so intimately.
The giddiness of him touching her, holding her as his mouth left scattered kisses along her nape, her décolletage, her bared breast, caused her to laugh.
He paused to look at her and raised a brow.
She covered her mouth with her hand sheepishly.
He removed her hand and planted a kiss on her palm.
“I did say I liked the sound of your laugh.” He said, leaning her onto her bed, “it only encourages me to tickle you.”
She gasped and hit him playfully in the chest, “You wouldn’t dare.”
In response, he brought her to the bed. His hands lifted her chemise higher and placed his mouth in the pocket where her hip joined her torso and her leg, leaving a kiss before moving lower.
She let out a giggle as his breath touched the sensitive flesh at her hip.
He planted more kisses below her abdomen, moving lower until she hovered above him, his head between her legs.
“There’s one place in particular,” he said, just touching her upper thigh with his tongue, “that I’ve wanted to kiss you again.”
“Kiss me everywhere,” she looked down at him. He placed both of her legs over his shoulders, placing a kiss on the inside of her thigh. He rested his head against the curve of her thigh for a beat, looking at her with love in his eyes, waiting for encouragement.
“Please proceed,” she said, taking a steadying breath.
He wasted no time, firmly placing his hands at her hips to pull her to his mouth.
A mewl of hapless pleasure drifted from her lips as he lapped at her opening in expert strides, finding a rhythm of what felt like figure 8’s with his tongue skating around her most immediate need for release.
She swayed her hips to his tune, the way he had taught her on the dance floor.
He felt for her hand and finding it, he placed her hand at the nape of his neck.
She caressed his hair and then gave it a tug; a muffled moan escaped him as he licked at her.
She decided she liked the sound and wanted to hear more of them, so she ran long, testing strokes along his shaft.
She felt the reverberations of his undiluted groan, to her core.
It was deliciously wicked, both sharing and relinquishing control in equally pleasurable turns.
His tongue kept digging and circling for her release until he found the place that cried out for him. A groan of ecstasy was pulled from Noelle before she could hold it back. He held onto her as she tumbled through it.
Fitz pulled himself away and looked around them in the now darkened room. When had she blown the candle out?
The two heard footsteps, and she shushed him and shoved him to hide in the antechamber of her room. The door was blown open just as she had thrown a wrapper over herself, and a male voice called into the darkened room.
“Moria?” the voice called.
Noelle rolled her eyes and answered, “No, brother, this is Noelle’s room.”
“Oh,” he said, taking her in, holding the candle closer to look at her. “I heard voices coming from this room. I assumed it was Moria’s.”
An offended party from behind him called out, “Now just why did you assume that, Jasper?” It was Moria looking at him, haughtily crossed arms demanding answers.
“Well, I…. I suppose I can’t say,” Jasper swallowed nervously under her scrutinizing gaze as he walked about the room holding out the candle at the usual hiding spots, under a chair, behind the curtains, the wardrobe. He threw back the counterpane where Fitz had been just momentarily.
“It smells like cognac in here,” Lawrence spoke from the doorway.
Jasper’s eyes flew to Noelle’s. “Where is he?”
“Where is who, my lord?” Miss Kelley called from the doorway.
“For the love of all that is holy, we might as well just bring up a tray of scones and call it an early morning teatime. Why are all of you in here?” Noelle asked agitatedly.
“Scones…a capital idea, sister,” Lawrence called from behind Jasper as the two used their combined weight to lift the settee and look beneath it.
“Why on god’s green earth would she have stashed a grown man of Fitz’s size underneath a settee? Would his height not be better fitted for the antechamber?” Moria asked, shaking her head at the two of them.
“You’re brilliant,” Jasper looked at her, snapping his fingers. He motioned with his head to the antechamber to Lawrence who nodded. The two stepped closer but Noelle stepped in front of them.
In answer, Lawrence removed his hands from behind his back and held up a white silk cravat. Noelle swore.
Jasper cleared his throat. “You’ve been found out, Pomfrey. Come out and take your sentence like a gentleman.”
The door to the antechamber swung open and a white-faced Fitz exited, taking Noelle’s hand in his.
Moria and Miss Kelley gasped. Whether it was from his mere presence, or the altered state of him- hair irrevocably askew and in only his breeches and linen shirt which hung loose and unbuttoned- it was hard to know.
Noelle merely thanked the heavens he’d had time to hide the rest of him from view.
“I’ll say this for you- you’re lucky you’ve already proposed to her,” Jasper said, crossing his arms. Fitz nodded and then looked him in the eyes.
“Yes, my lord. I apologize for entering unannounced. Are you angry?” Noelle studied him, he was like a young student being coerced into apologizing to a school master.
“Do not sneak into my house again. That is an order,” Jasper said, turning his back. He didn’t see the way that Fitz and Noelle clutched each other like nothing could part them again.
“If you aren’t going to thrash him, do you mind if I do the honors?” Lawrence asked.
“Lawrence, will you be quiet?” Noelle castigated in exasperation. A small laugh bubbled out of Fitz.
Jasper looked back at Fitz, as though he couldn’t find it within himself. Fitz had once been everything he disliked: idle, entitled, reckless. But he stood protectively at Noelle’s side, looking at her as though she held everything he needed in this life. He’d fought like hell to get back to her.
“Do you… want me to hit him?” Jasper asked his younger brother.
An animated chorus of “yes!” and “no!” rang out all at once, more voices, that of Olivia and Kathleen and Fleming, in the background.
But it was Miss Kelley who stared back at him, seemingly surprised at his behavior, but proud of the change. He nodded as though he had found his answer.
“I will bid you all good night. Fitz, I will see you in 8 weeks at the altar,” Jasper said, wrapping his dressing gown tighter about him as he left.
“I thought before we agreed upon 12?” Fitz called out, Noelle hitting him on the arm as he seemed to realize what had just occurred. Jasper didn’t bother to offer any other words in passing to the others.